"Having used the SoloProtect ID device for well over four years now, I have complete trust in the solution. If you ever feel you’re entering an uncomfortable situation, you have a discreet way of raising an alarm."

SoloProtect's safety solution helps to keep lone workers at St Lukes Hospice safe.

A local and long term SoloProtect customer, St Luke’s Hospice continues to provide a key duty of care to their lone worker employees.

St Luke's looks after over 18s from across the Sheffield region who have a terminal illness, including end-stage neurological, heart, kidney and lung conditions, cancer and HIV. Their aim is to improve the lives of the people that need them most, by providing high-quality care, support, compassion and respect; St Luke’s is all about life.

Every year, St Luke’s helps around 1,600 patients, not just in their specifically designed hospice but many in their own homes by their dedicated team of community nurses. In every case, it’s St Luke’s aim to alleviate pain, support and counsel. It’s not just patients that St Luke’s help either, they extend their wonderful support, counselling and practical help to family members too. Each year, their work touches the lives of around 5,000 people.

St Luke’s employs around 180 members of staff and a huge team of over 700 volunteers, all of them giving time, expertise and effort. Around 13 nurses work out in the community and experience a range of environments whilst working alone. It’s important, therefore, for St Luke’s to make provision for their safety whilst travelling, entering people’s homes or engaging with the wider community; a sentiment Jo Lenton, Head of Community Nursing, thoroughly agrees with:

"Our staff work tirelessly caring and supporting terminally ill people, therefore it’s hugely important that when they’re out in the community they feel safe or at the very least prepared to deal with risk, or a potentially dangerous situation."

St Luke’s chose SoloProtect as its lone worker solution provider back in 2012. Since then, they have imposed great importance on the solution; it’s become a key component of their lone worker policy, it’s part of every lone worker’s contract and use of the SoloProtect ID device is compulsory.

The market-leading SoloProtect ID Touch device, supplied as part of the SoloProtect solution, is designed to offer dedicated support, the fastest possible response and peace of mind to those working alone. It’s the most widely used dedicated device of its kind in the UK.

The device is specifically designed as an identity cardholder in order to be easy to wear and discreet to use, and is equipped with a 'Red Alert' function that allows a lone worker to easily call for help in an emergency and capture the audio of potentially violent, aggressive or abusive situations. The 'Red Alert' opens a call (via the device) with SoloProtect's Monitoring Centre where an operator will listen to the incident and quickly send an emergency response on the user's behalf.

A SoloProtect ARC Operator will remain focused on listening to the incident throughout its entirety in order to assess whether the severity level of the situation changes. Secondary tasks such as taking the lone worker's latest location via GPS, or listening to audio from earlier 'Amber Alert' messages, can be carried out in tandem, or by a 2nd ARC Operator, ensuring the main focus remains on the primary elements of the incident unfolding.

If a level one police escalation is required, this is carried out at the push of a button utilising a Unique Reference Number (URN) issued by each police force in England and Wales, allowing SoloProtect to request a response directly to that regional police control room - this is the most efficient way to request a response to a lone worker incident in the UK and can speed up the process, compared to a 999 call for example, by several minutes.

It was this dedicated support and speedy response that first attracted Jo and the St Luke’s Hospice team to the SoloProtect lone worker solution:

"Having used the SoloProtect ID device for well over four years now, I have complete trust in the solution. If you ever feel you’re entering an uncomfortable situation, you have a discreet way of raising an alarm. Even if a situation never arrives, knowing that they have the tools to deal with a potentially aggressive incident, provides our lone workers with peace of mind."

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